Chapter Seven
Arriving at her destination, Buffy decides to do what she always does when her personal life is in limbo: she slays. Giles and Dawn are easy to find in Houston’s Memorial Park despite how large it is. The thick tree cover and lack of manmade lights makes everything dark, perfect cover for a demon ritual. Needing a bigger distraction than an online shoe sale, Buffy doesn’t tell them about Willow and Spike and decides to focus on the problem directly in front of her. . . the problem she can do something about. Giles informs her that Byclof demons have some kind of enhanced night vision, so they don’t need much light anyway.
“What’s their ritual for?” Buffy side-whispers from their hiding spot behind some bushes.
Giles lets Dawn shows off her Watcher knowledge, “Byclof demons mate as a group, and they use human sacrifice as part of their mating ritual.”
“What do you mean?”
“Raw human liver is like their aphrodisiac. That and the screaming. They use the liver to. . .”
Buffy cuts her off, “A world of ewww. I don’t want to know the rest. Suddenly, I’m glad they can see in the dark, so I have to use my Slayer senses to kill them.”
“I’m just glad you’re here to do the killing.”
“Me, too. What are you and Giles going to do?” Buffy grips the handle of the scythe, her muscles gearing up.
“Free the humans, of course,” Dawn says like it’s obvious.
“How will you find them in the dark?”
“Probably the screaming will help.”
“Do you have weapons?”
Dawn clasps something. “Suped-up demon tasers.”
“Good.”
“Be careful, Buffy,” Giles finally speaks. “Byclof demons are rather large.”
“In more ways than one.” Dawn giggles.
Buffy rolls her eyes even though neither of them can see her. “Really. Was that a necessary image?”
“It was in my head, so I wanted it in yours, too.”
“Gee, thanks, Dawnie.”
“You’re welcome.”
A decidedly human cry of fear pierces the humid night.
“Well, I’m going in.”
Giles huffs. “Finally.”
Creeping up on the throng of demons, Buffy dives into the fight, disrupting the Byclof’s ritual, which thankfully had not proceeded very far yet. She dances around the demons’ attempts at hitting her, dodging them and swinging her blade.
When one extremely big demon grabs her from behind, she uses his bulky body as a fulcrum to land a sharp kick on a second demon who is charging at her. She then head-butts the demon holding her and bounces away when he releases her. Whirling, she arcs the blade through the air, slicing off a limb and then a head.
Not for the first time of late, she misses Spike fighting alongside her, and she wonders if he ever will again.
Three of the demons are surrounding the humans, protecting their prey and focusing on her. One girl is screaming bloody murder, emitting a high pitched wail. Buffy simultaneously wishes she would shut up and hopes she keeps making noise so that Giles and Dawn can find them.
Buffy elbows another demon in the head and then stabs it through the gut with the sharp end of her scythe. He loudly groans as he tumbles to the ground with the mortal wound.
From the corner of her eye, Buffy sees the lightning green energy of the tasers and hears their sizzle as they encounter flesh.
A third demon clubs her in the head, and stumbling backward but keeping her footing, she loses her weapon, which clatters to the ground. Head quickly clearing, she ducks as another swing comes at her. The demon grunts in frustration and then howls with pain as she knees him in what she hopes in a sensitive spot.
The tasers go off again, and the brief light allows her to spot her dropped weapon. She plunges into a roll and takes hold of the scythe again before she even finishes the motion. Hopping to her feet, she kills the third demon as he charges her.
Buffy vaguely realizes she’s assuming all the demons are male, so the fourth one that comes at her, she decides is female even though she can’t really tell due to the lack of lighting.
As she double kicks the demon in the head, she speaks through gritted teeth, “Don’t know why you would participate in this madness. Whatever happened to some nice candles and a soft, comfy bed?”
The demon roars at her and takes an unquestionably dazed swipe. Buffy neatly brings down the weapon and chops off the slow-moving arm. Demon blood spurts, and she quickly gores the demon in the chest before dancing away to avoid the spray.
The remaining three demons are wild with fury, so their movements and attack are sloppy and driven by emotion and likely grief. This allows Buffy to dispatch them with alacrity.
The girl has ceased her continual shrieking, but there is enough noise from the humans that Buffy finds the demons that Dawn and Giles tasered unconscious. With ease, Buffy decapitates them.
Dawn flicks on a flashlight. Several terrified men and women dressed in athletic gear huddle together and stare at them.
“You’re free to go,” Giles informs them.
With this permission, the joggers flee the scene without a word or sound other than an occasional whimper.
“Ungrateful prats,” he mutters. “Good job, as ever, Buffy.”
Brandishing the scythe, she wipes the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand and grins at him. “I think I needed that.”
“Now, the not so fun part.” Dawn sighs and swings the beam to illuminate some decidedly ugly demon corpses. “Clean up.”
Disposal of demon bodies is fortunately or unfortunately a road that leads Buffy back into her head again. Not for the first time, she marvels that Faith was right. Slaying really does leave Buffy hungry and horny, and after Spike left her with that kiss, damn him, her body is raring to go.
His kiss was gentle with the promise of something more, reminiscent of how they had been in Sunnydale at the end when their relationship had gone beyond sex and lust and was predicated on a consistent and mutual trust and belief in one another. . . when it was back to the place they’d started from when he first chose to protect Dawn from Glory.
Buffy recognizes that by being in this park tonight, she may never know what it’s like to take things further with a human Spike. . . not that she will mind if he chooses to be a vampire again.
Will he love her again if he’s a vampire. . . or if he stays human? Does she still love him?
She tries to think back over the last few weeks since she read his book. . . since she found herself in New Orleans hunting down his book signing. . . since she and Dawn told him the truth and spent all that time reminiscing about the past. To Buffy’s astonishment, her heart overtakes her thoughts in a resounding affirmative that yes, she does love him. She loved him then and loves him now.
She suddenly wants to be back in the hotel room with Spike and Willow, so she can know what’s happening.
“Buffy, pay attention!” Giles snaps.
Alarmed, she squints up from the hole she’s digging and into the brilliant light of Giles’s flashlight and realizes that she has accidentally shoveled dirt over his head. “Oops.”
* * *
Buffy pushes the button for the hotel elevator, but the darn thing moves too slowly and seems to be stopping on multiple floors, so she searches for and finds the staircase. Racing up the unadorned concrete stairs, she makes it to the fourteenth floor with ease. She bursts into the hallway, door banging against the wall, and runs to Giles’s suite. Pulling the slender card out of her back pocket, she keys open the entrance.
No one occupies the suite.
Her eyes flit over the living area, and she spies a large paper folded in half and propped on the glass end table. She swipes the paper and reads the note written in Willow’s neat handwriting.
“Moved to 908. Didn’t want to make a mess in Giles’s room, and Spike offered to pay.”
Dropping the sheet, Buffy’s feet move before she can consciously think, slamming the door behind her before she revisits the dimly lit stairs again to floor nine.
Although detecting the presence of magic isn’t part of the Slayer repertoire, Buffy senses power and smells something akin to Willow’s herbs. . . herbs that have been set on fire overlaid with a familiar scent she usually associates with burnt sugar and an undercurrent of decay.
She finds an extra burst of speed, rounding the corner and almost tripping over the overstuffed chairs across from the elevator. She doesn’t even have to look at numbers because the smell gets stronger as she approaches the room, and she almost swears she can see brief surges of crackling lines of energy rippling through the walls in a faint echo of a completed spell.
Buffy skids to a halt in front of suite 908 and notices that unlike all the other doors on this floor, this one is cracked, buttressed open by the metal security guard. She can see a flash of scarlet through the slit, and she shoves the door open with care, immediately squatting next to the body of her friend who has collapsed into a sitting position next to the door, one leg splayed haphazardly outward and one bent to the side. Her head rests on the wall, and her eyes are closed. She’s so still that Buffy’s eyes can’t detect whether her chest is rising and falling.
Sweeping Willow’s tangled hair aside, Buffy uses two fingers to feel for her friend’s carotid. Buffy’s so scared that it takes her a few seconds to find the steady dull thrum that pulses beneath her fingers. In a rush, she lets out the breath she didn’t realize she was holding.
Willow groans as Buffy begins to assess her for injuries. Over the years, Buffy has become more adept than she ever wanted to be at this task, at knowing when and how to allow someone to move, at setting broken bones, at identifying concussions, and at stitching wounds.
When Buffy determines that Willow is safe to move away from the room’s entrance, Willow finds her voice, “I’m okay.” Her tone is low and raspy as if she’s been at a rock concert and sung all the songs at the top of her lungs.
Buffy slips her arm around the redhead’s waist, and Willow somehow finds her footing as Buffy stands. They hobble across the room until they reach the sofa, and closing her eyes, Willow falls to one side on the cushions and pulls her legs up.
“I did it. . . we did it,” Willow mutters, reaching for Buffy’s arm. “We sorta wrecked the room though.” She half-laughs. “And maybe made the electrical system in the building short out for a while, but I made sure no one noticed.”
Not sure how she feels about her friend being that powerful, Buffy takes in what her eyes only skimmed over when she entered the suite. The walls are cracked, paint peeling in strips and sagging to the floor in large colorful curls. The carpet, once a neutral beige, is blackened in a large circle that spiderwebs out to all sides of the room.
Willow continues, “Spike’s in the bedroom. I helped him there before I. . .” She coughs, her chest rattling. “Before I propped the door. Then, I couldn’t. . . so tired.” She blinks her eyes and tries to sit up again.
Buffy puts a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Will. Sleep. I don’t think you have a concussion.”
“N-no, I know. Just that. . . Spike, he’s okay.”
Buffy’s worry ratchets up despite her friend’s assurance. “He is?”
“Go see,” is all Willow can manage before she’s out.
Buffy sends a quick text to Giles to let him know where they are. After dropping her off, he and Dawn set out to join Jenn and Liz in Bellaire.
She tucks her phone back into her pocket and realizes that she’s been delaying for reasons she thinks are probably too complicated to make sense out of at the moment. She’s terrified of the implications of Spike’s decision and frightened about the impact on her heart whatever he chose.
The bedroom is shrouded in shadows, and Buffy finds herself lingering in the doorway, using the dim light from the living area to make out Spike’s unconscious form on the bed. She tries to calm her nerves enough to look for evidence of him breathing, but as with Willow, she can’t, or she doesn’t want to. She’s not sure which is true.
Instead, Buffy focuses on his face, the concave of his cheek, his slightly parted lips, and his closed eyes. She never imagined that she would see that face again. Five years ago, she allowed herself to grieve as much as any Slayer has time to grieve in the onslaught of ever present planning and fighting and surviving. She’s always been a pull herself up by her bootstraps and handle the crisis of the moment kind of girl. . . she’s had to be. At this point, there have been more disasters than she can count in the over twelve years she’s been a Slayer.
The funny thing is that now that she’s read his book and has him back in her life in some form, she has given herself permission to have the feelings she only partially processed in the past. She is starting to believe that those three weeks in New Orleans are the best thing that ever happened to her and Dawn. They finally had a moment to play and connect and feel and just be. Even without intending it, Spike has a hand in helping them, but after all this time, she’s not surprised.
What will it mean if he chose to stay William? What will it mean if he decided to return to being Spike?
She supposes she won’t know unless she discovers a way to move her feet.
Buffy has no trouble with the quick, facile movements necessary in slaying, but sometimes she feels like she’s a kid who just got the training wheels taken away when it comes to matters of her very human heart.
Before she can talk herself out of discovering the truth, Buffy crosses the gulf between them and slowly eases onto the edge of the bed next to Spike’s unmoving body. Though her heart is pounding, she tentatively places the back of her fingers to his cheek. He makes a small noise at her touch, so Buffy barely registers that his skin is cool. . . cooler than a human’s should be.
Not sure whether to believe her senses, she finds his forearm and lightly puts her whole hand against his flesh.
Oh god. . .
A single tear slips over her lashes before she can prevent it, and she suddenly feels exhausted. Then, thinking to hell with it, she curls up on the bed next to him, slipping her arm over his unmoving abdomen, placing her head on his chest where earlier in the evening his heart beat, and inhaling his familiar scent. He emits another low noise, and she swears she feels his arm gently tighten around her as she drifts off to sleep.